@article {bnh-5830,
	title = {Determining threshold conditions for extreme bushfire behaviour annual report 2018-2019},
	number = {508},
	year = {2019},
	month = {09/2019},
	institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC},
	address = {Melbourne},
	abstract = {<p>Crown fires in forest ecosystems can pose a major threat to life and property due to their high intensities and rapid rates of spread. However, research into the prediction of crown fire dynamics in the Eucalyptus forests of Australia is limited. Previous studies have focused on coarse temporal scales, utilised low resolution weather based predictors, and often disregard the spatial nature of crown fires. Our study aimed to use observations from large wildfires in eucalypt forests to develop an empirical model to predict the likelihood of crown fire events using environmental predictors at an hourly scale. Our study was conducted in south-eastern Australia using data from fifteen large wildfires that occurred between 2009 and 2015. Fire severity maps were created for each fire at a 30\&nbsp;m resolution using Landsat imagery from which we calculated the proportion of 30 m pixels experiencing crown fire within a 150 x 150 m window (2.25 ha). Predictor variables were chosen to represent the four key environmental drivers of fire behaviour, namely fuel moisture (i.e. live and dead fuel), fuel load and structure (i.e. surface, elevated, and bark fuels, and tree height), fire weather (i.e. vapour-pressure deficit, wind speed, relative wind direction) and topography (i.e. slope and ruggedness). Random Forests were used to model the effect of environmental drivers on the proportion of crown fire. Fuel moisture content variables were the best predictors of probability of crown consumption. Topographic variables and fire weather had only an intermediate influence and fuel load and structure had the lowest influence. Crown fire runs largely occurred when thresholds in vapour-pressure deficit (\&lt;4\&nbsp;kPa) and dead fuel moisture content (\&lt;7\%) were exceeded. Predictions from the model showed a high degree of agreement with the raw fire severity maps. The proposed models have the potential to provide guidance on the likelihood of crown fire during fire events.</p>},
	keywords = {Bushfire, extreme bushfires, fire behaviour., weather conditions},
	issn = {508},
	author = {Alex Filkov and Thomas Duff and Trent Penman}
}
@article {bnh-4998,
	title = {Determining threshold conditions for extreme fire behaviour},
	number = {417},
	year = {2018},
	month = {10/2018},
	institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC},
	abstract = {<p>Flame spread is an important process in the propagation of bushfires. The likelihood of ignition and combustion rates of fuels are dependent on the type and nature of the heat flux. The majority of previous research has used static heat flux, whereby a consistent heating source is used to ignite samples in a laboratory setting. This is despite the highly dynamic heating regimes typically observed during structural and wildland fires.</p>},
	keywords = {Fire, fire behaviour., fire modelling, fire severity, modelling},
	author = {Alex Filkov and Thomas Duff and Trent Penman}
}
